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Apr. 16th, 2003 02:52 pmAside from the debates in mike's LJ this week, there's also been a bit of a blow up on one of the mailing list for the SCA that I'm on.
In response to this story, someone replied, referring to "the stupidity of the coalition forces" as a tragedy.
In response, a friend of mine from the SCA, who is a former Marine and veteran of the first Gulf war, posted the following.
Ok...that does it.
The last thing on those Marines minds was that museum...and rightly so.
The city is not secure, there is still fighting, snipers all over the place...some hiding among groups of civillians to avoid return fire...suicide bombers killing coalition forces and Iraqi civillians, and those loss of those artifacts are NOTHING compared to the loss of one soldier's life.
Coming from someone who fought in the first Gulf War, the job of a soldier is just that....a soldier...not a cop.
Most of the looting has occurred at Baath party offices, and party memebers estates....and understandably so....these people tortured the Iraqi population for 20 years...backlash was likely.... but no one expected the museums to be looted....and actually they expected the curators to be locking up those treaures in the VAULTS that were readily available......its not like the tourism business has been booming in Baghdad for the last month...
I can honestly say as a former Marine that if I was there, and my orders did not specifically give me authorization to intervene in this kind of domestic issue...I would have regretablly, stood by as well....and until you have been in that kind of situation.....you have no right to call ANYONE stupid.....especially those brave men and women serving their countries.
I just thought it bore repeating.
In response to this story, someone replied, referring to "the stupidity of the coalition forces" as a tragedy.
In response, a friend of mine from the SCA, who is a former Marine and veteran of the first Gulf war, posted the following.
Ok...that does it.
The last thing on those Marines minds was that museum...and rightly so.
The city is not secure, there is still fighting, snipers all over the place...some hiding among groups of civillians to avoid return fire...suicide bombers killing coalition forces and Iraqi civillians, and those loss of those artifacts are NOTHING compared to the loss of one soldier's life.
Coming from someone who fought in the first Gulf War, the job of a soldier is just that....a soldier...not a cop.
Most of the looting has occurred at Baath party offices, and party memebers estates....and understandably so....these people tortured the Iraqi population for 20 years...backlash was likely.... but no one expected the museums to be looted....and actually they expected the curators to be locking up those treaures in the VAULTS that were readily available......its not like the tourism business has been booming in Baghdad for the last month...
I can honestly say as a former Marine that if I was there, and my orders did not specifically give me authorization to intervene in this kind of domestic issue...I would have regretablly, stood by as well....and until you have been in that kind of situation.....you have no right to call ANYONE stupid.....especially those brave men and women serving their countries.
I just thought it bore repeating.
